56
Popular Culture Review
traditional view of literature, Chris affirms that standards for evaluating texts are
both possible and desirable, and that the standards which Schuster feels
obligated to uphold constitute a legitimate means for privileging certain texts as
“literature,” which at once devalues other texts as not-literature, and thus
inferior. In accepting the legitimacy of a standard, Chris not only affirms the
value and usefulness of a criticism that attempts to establish and maintain these
standards but also discredits critical theories that consider all texts to be of equal
value to a culture regardless of who wrote them or what they say. “The
Graduate” assumes—and thus it does not argue for—^the value of a culture’s
possessing a privileged body of writing it can call “literature.”
To those unfamiliar with the arguments of modem critical theories and
their orientation toward cultural studies, the issues of authorial intent and the
value of literature would seem to be matters of common sense: if authors do not
know what is in their work, wbo does? And if a culture cannot decide what is
“literature,” how will it know which texts to value?
But as some modem critical theories argue, “common sense” often
masks an ideology’s efforts at self-preservation, and this is a case in point, for
the episode ignores the social and political implications involved in a culture’s
“valuing” of certain texts over others. Deconstmction and other related theories
argue that the standards by wliich literary works are judged embody the values
of the group dominating the critical community and are stmctured so as to
marginalize works by authors who earn, for whatever reason, the community’s
disapprobation. It is unlikely that few in a television audience not part of
academia question the value of valuing. It is because the critical community has
not questioned it that women and minority authors have been excluded for so
long fi-om a literary canon that is only now thinking about admitting them,
largely because powerfiil arguments based on modem critical theories have
forced it to do so. When confronted with the issues it raises, this episode retreats
in haste. It ignores the social and political implications of relying on a critical
theory and standards that privilege one body of texts while devaluing other texts
produced by writers who lack the critical community’s approval.
“Altered Egos” is equally reluctant to confront the hard issues it raises.
By its uncritical affirmation of the validity of difference in the constmction of
identities, this episode refuses to consider the ways in which “difference”
problematicizes identity, especially group identity; it ignores the social, cultural,
or political implications of valuing, and consequently privileging, differences in
people. To Melvoin’s credit, his stories avoid valorizing ethnic or religious
differences. But far too often in real life, as anyone who pays attention can
attest, difference is assumed to confer superiority. People committed to a
democratic way of life perceive themselves to have a form of government
superior to those ^\^lo do not; people of one color perceive themselves to be
superior in a variety of ways to those with skins of a different color; people
ambitious to acquire wealth and social status perceive themselves to be more